Howard in Popular Culture
Howard appeared as himself twice in The Simpsons. In "When You Dish Upon a Star", Homer meets and befriends Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger and Howard. Later in the episode, Howard is injured when trying to jump from a truck to the RV that Homer was driving. In the end, he pitches Homer's movie idea and gets it greenlit. Another episode ("Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder") Homer and Howard are fighting each other while appearing on The Springfield Squares. Later, Howard gives Homer the inspiration to spend more time with his kids and offers him some money that Homer refuses at first but then takes. Howard yanks the money back and drives away.
When he hosted Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, Eddie Murphy called him "Opie Cunningham".
In the South Park episode "Ginger Kids", Cartman asks a crowd of fellow gingers to name great Americans with red hair, the only name they can think of is "Ron Howard". When asked to name a second, one responds "Ron Howard" again.
On a VH1 special about the 100 greatest child stars, many of the interviewees considered Ron Howard to be the most successful child star of all time, considering his two major television acting roles and his directing career.
In the series finale of the Emmy Award-winning, critically acclaimed series Arrested Development (which he executive produced and narrated), Howard appears as himself in an epilogue at the end of the episode and refers to himself as "a Hollywood icon".
In Season 1, Episode 3 of Stroker and Hoop on Adult Swim, Stroker and Hoop run a detective agency whose first client needs them to make Ron Howard stop controlling his mind.
In October 2008, Howard reprised his roles as Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham for the first time in over 20 years when he appeared in a video on funnyordie.com in which he endorsed Barack Obama and urged people to vote. The video, titled "Ron Howard’s Call to Action", also features Griffith and Winkler. In the video, Howard shaves his beard and wears a wig in order to recreate the way he looked when he was younger.
Ron Howard made a cameo appearance in the 2009 music video for Jamie Foxx's song "Blame It" alongside Forrest Whittaker, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Samuel L. Jackson. In the video he is shown holding a glass of champagne.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, howard, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our party]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I’ll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)